Concept of Consumer Health

consumer health

Consumer health is a recently introduced subject in the context of our country. It has been started in Nepal with the objective of making consumers aware of their health. In the beginning, the concept of consumer health was initiated keeping in mind the adverse effect to consumer while buying and using the medicines randomly. Now, the scope of consumer health has been widened as it deals with all kinds of health problems created due to the consumption of the goods and products available in the market.

Introduction to consumer health

The person who avails the services or purchases the available goods from the market is called a consumer. In this sense, all of us at one time or other purchases goods and services, and thus we all are consumers. In other words, we may say that the consumer is the individual who purchases goods and services from the market for the personnel or family needs without the interest of profit. People buy food and drink, articles, clothes, medicines, etc. and use the health services facilities and workers. Needs of the people are unlimited. So, to fulfill their needs they go to the market and purchase goods and use the services according to their knowledge, capacity and available resources. In this regard, it is observed that the consumers but their goods from the shopkeeper or merchant, who has the motto of gaining maximum profit from the minimum investment, and thus he tries to sell low quality product through various ways which may be harmful to the consumer's health. Consumer health is a social movement seeking to secure rights and powers of the buyers in relation to seller of goods and services. Thus, consumer's health is condition of health, which is affected by consuming goods and services available in the market.

In fact, consumer health deals with the decisions of the individuals made about the purchases and use of the available health products and services that will have a distinct effect on their health. In involves the economic or monetary aspects of health over which individuals have control. In brief, we can say that, The term consumer health refers to that are of health teaching concerned with giving consumers a background that will enable them to make sound decisions in the selection, purchase and use of professional health services and products.This also includes a consideration of health advertising by mass media of communication aimed at influencing such choices, and the topics of misinformation, misconceptions, fake quackery and superstitions which influence health attitudes and consequently health practices.

1. Right choice of goods and services: When we understand that low quality goods and services adversely affect our health, we see whether the goods and services have quality or not at the time of buying them. For example, when go to buy apples in the market, we taste them first and do confirm their quality; we make similar practice while buying other things. We get this type of awareness from consumer health education.
2. Protection of our own and community health: When we know that adulterated food grains, low quality food, quack medicines, etc degrade our health, we take necessary precaution against them. We also make our community aware of this problem, so that it would be easy to raise our unified voice against such bad practices and give pressure to the government to take necessary against them. Therefore, consumer health education is to be made widespread to make individuals and the community more conscious of their good health.
3. Consciousness for consumer rights and responsibility: Although it is the responsibility of each and every citizen to protect consumer health, many people have not taken interest on it. There are majority of people in Nepal who buy goods recommended by shopkeepers. The laws related to consumer health have clearly mentioned that we should note the price, quality, date of manufacture, expiry date and the place where to keep it while purchasing a thing. The government has enacted many acts and regulations in different dates for the protection of consumer rights. However, it is due to less publicity of these laws, most of the people is not aware about their consumer rights and is highly deprived of their rights. Therefore, there is an urgent need to publicize consumer health education to every house and community of the country.